Traumatic Brain Injury, A Journey Unless it happened to your family member, no one paid attention to the affects of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Now with our soldiers coming home with TBI's, there is more focus on this injury. I feel it is time to tell the a story about my daughter, Barbara, in the hopes that others can find their way through the maze of helping your loved one with TBI get the help they need. It was September 8, 1991. I had just driven three hours home from UNC, Chapel Hill, in North Carolina and had gone to my daughter, Teressa's home to have birthday cake with my sister, Jan. I received a phone call from Barbara's fiancée's mother that stopped my heart. She said that Barbara had an accident and was flown to Duke Hospital. She could tell me nothing else. I called Duke Hospital and gave them my daughter's name. They told me she was in intensive care and put me through. The nurse said she was stable. What had happened? I quickly left and when I got home, called her dad, Bob, and told him what I knew. Exhausted as I was, I told my husband, Manuel, we should lay down for an hour and then drive to the hospital. Foolish! How can I lay down when my daughter is in intensive care. We left immediately. Upon arriving at the hospital, we found Bob and his wife already there. Went to nurses station and they led me to Barbara who I found was hooked up to all sorts of wires. I went to her and said "Barb it's mom". No response. She was in a coma. Fred, Barbara's fiancé was in the waiting room when I returned, and that's when I got the story. Barbara worked for NC State as a surveyor in the lower part of the state. She had moved to the upper part but could not transfer as there was no opening. Shortly after she moved an opening became available. In the interim she had helped a friend, who bought and sold horses, by exercising them. I had stayed with Barb over Labor Day weekend and when I arrived found her in bed asleep. She was badly bruised and when I woke her and asked, she told me a horse had falling on her and she was feeling weak. She did not heed my request to go see a Doctor before starting her new job, but picked up Fred's son from school and went to exercise some horse's. Fred's son was looking for a new horse and the owner and the boy went into the barn to look at a horse. Barbara had been riding one down and was doing figure eights in the ring. When they came of the barn she was laying face down on the ground, beside her and was already in a coma.by exercising them.boughtand sold horses, exercise them.
